Fans of the Blackhawks must be pinching themselves, trying to make sure this is all real.

Suddenly, the Hawks matter again.

There’s an entertaining team on the ice led by budding superstars Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews….

It’s time to leave in the past what has happened the last decade. The year Alpo Suhonen coached the team, Mike Smith’s run as GM, and players such as Alexander Karpovtsev and Boris Mironov cluttering up the ice are just bad memories now.

The 13-year veteran leads the Predators with nine goals, and though the season is still young, Bonk is somewhat surprisingly on pace for the best goal-scoring year of his career.

His offensive output has been a big boost to a team that lost a bundle of firepower during the offseason, and he’s producing even though he spends most of his time on a checking line with Jerred Smithson and Jed Ortmeyer.

“It’s hard to say why — they’re just going in for me,’’ Bonk said with a characteristic shrug. “Sometimes you need 100 chances to score one. Right now it seems like everything goes in.’‘

I typically dislike commenting on rumors, because anyone can start them without naming sources and 99 percent of published rumors turn out to be exaggerated or just simply B.S. I don’t know the gentleman who wrote the FoxSports.com piece about Lombardi being on the hot seat, and I’m certainly not going to question his motives or sources. And given where the Kings stand—that would be last place in the conference—I suppose it’s fair to question whether Dean Lombardi SHOULD be on the hot seat. Any GM whose team is at the bottom of the conference is going to come under some scrutiny.

I would be completely stunned if Lombardi got fired this year, even if the Kings finished in last place.

Here’s a suggestion for the governors to chew over before the Pittsburgh Penguins get too far along in their plans for a new building or before the Edmonton Oilers and Calgary Flames complete their construction plans.

Why not allow clubs with new buildings on the horizon to adopt a slightly larger ice surface than the current 200-by-85-foot sheet that is standard in the NHL? The idea of expanding the width by as little as five feet makes sense in an era when players are bigger, stronger and faster. Almost every time someone mentions making the game better, that’s a talking point, that you need to go not necessarily to the international width (100 feet, too wide by some standards), but to 90 feet, just so it isn’t so crowded out there.

This topic was brought up on the NHL Hour yesteday, and there was no mention of altering the ice surface for new buildings. Bettman did say changing the ice surface in current rinks would also change the site lines for the fans in the seats, so no to changing the ice dimensions in current rinks.

After a few skating drills at the end, Carlyle called everyone together for a lengthy on-ice discussion.

“It was their practice,” Carlyle said. “My speech was more about how they’re going to be judged on how we perform tomorrow. We can’t change what we did last night. It wasn’t enough. We understand that. Now we’re moving to prepare for tomorrow. We felt giving them ownership of practice today was one of the methods that can lighten the day because we’re pretty down in the mouth about what happened last night.”

Pavol Demitra is definitely playing. Matt Foy is coming out for him. Second straight time he’s been scratched after a two-point game. Foster skated today and hopes to practice tomorrow. Nummelin and Harding skated but won’t play.

Demitra has officially been activated for tonight’s game. Harding has been placed on injured reserve to make room for him. This is becoming a shuffling game.

Leading my notebook with the bad luck the Wild has had with facial injuries. Three guys wore full cages today. I said to Jacques it looks like college, and he said, “like a kennel.”